Something Stupid
by Tj Barci
Summary: Along with loneliness, Alfred's only companion is his brother's new relationship with his ex-girlfriend. His best guess as to why he's here is because he's pissed off, but then again, it could be because he didn't water the hydrangea... Striking him in the middle of his boredom, an innocent encounter makes him wonder if he's really better off dead.
1. Capítulo Uno

Everyday I think of you you're on my mind  
>Some things in the past are better left behind<br>Every night I dream of you the images as clear as day  
>Can'tcha say you believe in me? Can'tcha say you believe in me?<br>You know that where there's a will there's a way  
>Can'tcha say you believe in me? Can'tcha see what it means to me?<br>Don't leave me alone tonight 'cause I still love you

~Boston

"Today's been great. Just great," I muttered to the air, walking down the concrete path to my first-floor apartment. Just as I was passing its single window, however, I noticed something peculiar. My mouth dropped. I didn't know when I'd arrived that I'd received free admission to a circus.

My lips twitched, and a chuckle escaped my tightly-drawn lips. Soon I was laughing with abandon, unable reign myself back in to sanity.

Maybe it was the fact that she was five inches shorter, and the thought of them kissing and having sex was pretty laughable. Or perhaps it was that she was completely aware of his cluelessness, she was enjoying it, and he seemed to have no bloody idea.

After I no longer found it quite so funny, I clenched my fists. Anger melded with confusion, radiating from my chest in waves. I could gaze at them no longer. I was burning up.

"You are the worst brother a person could have, you know that? And you too, you're a - I'm gone and you go after the next open spot, is that it? Well you know what, who gives a shit about you and him! Nobody! That's right!"

I sank to my knees and thrust the heels of my hands into my eyes. Her bemused smile was painted across my thoughts, a glowing stain that I would never be able to wash clean. My lids were spotted with those black specks you see when you rub your eyes too hard, which, with a start, I realised I was doing.

"Oh Michelle," I moaned, biting back a wave of self-pity.

Maybe... maybe that smile meant to deflect petty advances? Maybe he'd just caught her off guard? I pulled my hands from my face and glanced at them from behind the shrubs again in one last attempt to prove my theory true.

My eyes bit the sight of her caramel skin, revealing itself in all its shimmers as her dress slid off the sofa. The curtain obscured everything past her hips, but I didn't need to see anything to know how her joints bowed and girated, twisted and bent underneath their silky coating.

She mouthed, "I love you."

I fell back among the thorns, plunging my hooked hands uselessly at the window ledge as I crashed. I wanted to tear the plants up from their roots. I wanted to break his neck. I wanted to start a war.

Funny how three words can build or break a person's spirit.

_It is gone. Welcome to Georgia! I eat meat._

_I love you._

_I am dead._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Uhm, I know I need to finish my other stories, but this experimental... thingy... wouldn't leave me. I wanted to try this pairing. I also wanted to pull my rusty first person out again, and use emotion a little differently. Let's see if we can finish _this one_.


	2. Chapter Two

**A/N:** I got some muse back :D Some of this was written about a month ago, and the rest just today (half in the car in a notebook, and the other in the same book when I should've been practising guitar) So ta-da, have some nonsense!

Vaguely aware of celestial tears, I wiped at my face; but the renewed headache took precedence. Self-pity and disbelief had won over for now as I watched them move about the apartment.

_I_ wanted to be unaware of me. I couldn't stand me.

I had just curled into myself, elbows on knees, when a lady came strolling down the path I was sitting on with a baby stroller. I glanced at her but went back to my vigil, only in the back of my mind thinking that maybe she might zip straight through me.

Suddenly there was a shriek. I whipped my head up to see that the stroller had fallen over and the mother was gathering her baby up with that mixed look of matriarchal concern and who-the-hell-hurt-my-child on her young face.

"What the hell?"

It took me a beat, but I recognised her as Mrs. Hedérváry. _Child grew fast, _I thought.

"I-I didn't mean it!" I said uselessly.

"Strangest thing ever... what, is there just a big invisible wall there?" She was no longer as angry, but she glared at me with eyes that could bring the devil to his knees as she buckled her baby firmly back in. I wondered if she was torn between thinking she was hallucinating or if she really believed something was there. I hoped she was.

That was the closest thing I'd gotten to human contact in the next few days. I didn't want to hurt anyone unintentionally so I'd slunk behind the bushes. All the more perfect to stalk the budding couple and make me depressed.

It pissed me off that they weren't fighting. Michelle and I were like any other young couple -of course we'd fought- but this was just uncanny. Compliance seemed to be the name of the game. I imagined taking their heads and smacking them together, or pulling off their rose-coloured glasses by force. Sometimes I thought Matthew's were the pinkest I'd ever seen.

"Why don't you just... just go get a nice little picture and put it in... in your album already..." I mumbled to the glass. "You're too damn perfect."

* * *

><p>Today, Matthew brought home a puppy, and her face lit up like a Christmas tree. She skipped around the room, sandaled feet flying behind her. She took it from him and nuzzled it like it was her long-lost brother.<p>

A part of me wanted to be the man making her happy. The need to hold her manifested itself in wracking sobs. The other part, the logical part, kept banging me in the back of the eyes with the knowledge that though Michelle loved animals, she would be afraid. I remembered some story where her precious cocker spaniel had gotten eaten by some bigger animal even though she'd tried to save it. That fear wouldn't have gone away. Plus, she never thought of taking care of things. Without poor Matthew it'd die.

_Maybe it will._

* * *

><p>My chance came when some lady opened the main door for her wheelchair-bound relative. I squeezed by and booked it to my apartment, where Michelle was getting ready to take the dog for a walk.<p>

Being the little princess she was, she held the door open for it, and unknowingly, me.

In the seconds it took for me to walk around the dog, I was overtaken by the deadweight of her beauty. Today she was dressed in an oversized T-shirt and capris, with no makeup. She didn't need it.

I had liked her for her small frame and fairy-like features. Her nose was small, a button on her oval-shaped face. In the hazy light of the hallway her eyes didn't shine in that decidedly hated mischievous way, but in a way that made them soft; reminiscent, even.

My luck ran out when the door slammed shut in front of me. I had spent too long looking.

Funny how when someone has something you want, they're a Godsend. Obviously I wasn't getting back into the house with my compulsive need to stare, so when my brother came home from his job, I leapt up from the floor and nearly ran into him, spewing lovey-dovey crap out of my mouth as he turned the key. He was a door slammer, so I had to bolt inside. But I was _in_.

I didn't know that that was the best thing, though. My body ached with want once more, and I began to hate the world more than ever.

There was no glass.

* * *

><p>My and Matthew's apartment was a simple thing.<p>

On the north and west walls lie cabinets, two sinks, the fridge, microwave, and oven. Also on the west wall is one of those couches that's shaped like an L. It's bleu. Past the couch are the two bedrooms. Nearly the entire east wall is that stupid window.

I now stared out instead of in, and my entire being felt like mush. My thoughts were sluggish; my limbs, despite not having the ability to get tired, felt like they would fall off if I got off the couch; and seconds seemed like hours.

"Hey Matt, do you ever think about Alfred?"

I didn't even have a nickname. I wasn't her Freddie anymore. I was... _Alfred_.

"Sure I do. We're twins," Matt said absent-mindedly, but not in the bored tone Michelle had. "Why?"

"Because I feel bad that I'm not in mourning clothes. Or that I'm not crying every time I think of him."

"Mourning clothes are outdated, don't you think? What brought this all on?"

"I saw that old lady next door crying her eyes out over her husband."

"Maybe it's because you weren't together as long as those two were. Sixty years is a lot more than two." A dish banged in the sink, and Matthew cursed. "It cracked," he hissed.

"I guess," Michelle said, biting the inside of her cheek and tapping her bare foot against the headboard of the bed. She was completely unaware of Matthew's plight, and she probably didn't even know he had two sinks full of dishes to clean all by himself.

_They won't be together long, _I thought, slurping up my observations up like deliciously warm fudge.

My elation got turned down a few notches, however, when I realised that I could do nothing to speed up the process. Without the ability to touch, all I could do was sit like a broom in the corner whilst they licked each other. The second thought made me want to gag, and the first made me want to eat my own arm.

"Urggggghhh!" I roared into my own personal bubble, tipping my head back to stare out the window.

I'd quickly gotten over trying to get their attention. I already knew it was useless, but I guess I'd just thought they were special or something. They weren't. Even standing in their way and having them bump into the Invisible Me had lost its touch after a few days.

"So Mr. Jones, how did you figure out you were dead?"

"Well, mister reporter sir, it went something like this. I saw my girlfriend making out with my brother and I couldn't see myself, and they couldn't see me."

"Ooh, harsh. Have you talked to them since ghosts became visible to everyone?"

"Yup. Poor Michelle's tried to take me back and my brother's so freaked out it's not even funny. Cruel of me not to accept her offer and for me to play with him like that, but it's so hilarious."

I'd taken to talking to myself when I became bored of listening to them. How I wished I could be seen. But my reality wasn't one of those teen supernatural romances where all the creatures are known to everyone and the heroine loves the freaks for who they are.

I wished it was.

* * *

><p>"Say, why don't we go to a movie?" Matthew said, flinging his wet rubber gloves onto the counter.<p>

"Sure."

I decided to follow them. _Why the hell not? There's nothing better to do._

It struck me as kind of stupid: I'd just gotten back into my apartment, and here I was leaving again. But I was awake. Even I could get bored.

They were seeing some chick-flick, of course. Michelle may have been pretty and petite, but she wasn't a push-over. If she didn't want to see the war movie, then she wouldn't see it, and that was that. I felt sorry for my brother. _He _was the push-over.

Michelle wasn't my girlfriend anymore, so I didn't tag along. I chose an empty chair in the lobby so I could people-watch. A girl at the counter spilt popcorn all over the place and someone rigged the ICEE machine so it wouldn't stop flowing. And a girl was... crying?

No, that had to be a noise of some machine. I was hearing things again.

No, I wasn't.

I had just about swiveled my head around nearly 360 degrees before I saw her. She was curled into herself, her head buried into her folded arms on a grey theatre table. How I'd heard her I had no idea. She was so quiet. It was a fluke.

It felt weird listening to her cry and shudder in attempts to stop the tears from taking over her completely with their best friend, sadness. I settled for reading the menus above the concessions stand.

"If you don't want to be embarrassed, then move," I mumbled, cheek in hand, pitying her.

She stirred then, looking violated and distraught when she lifted her head from the mass of blonde hair hiding her away in her own little bubble. Puffy eyes and a red nose couldn't hide the fact she was attractive; everyone knew a crying girl made men squirm with manly instinct, but she was something else altogether.

I smiled, thinking she'd turned off the waterworks. Slowly her gaze settled upon me, and if it were possible, I felt a chill seize me in my nonexistent bones.

"If someone is hiding underneath a table or just thinks they're a funny shit, I'm giving them five seconds to clear out before I kick them to kingdom come." There was a hitch to each word that made up some sort of charming European accent I couldn't place.

I made to move, but then I realised she could do nothing to me. These impulses had been bugging me for the past few weeks and I wanted to know how to shut them off.

Five seconds ticked by - too fast for her and too slow for me - and she let out a snarl, still believing someone had it out to make fun of her. It was then my mind finally let it dawn on me that she'd _heard _me. She'd heard me! I sucked in the breath that threatened to become a whoop of joy, suddenly afraid.

What? Wait. Wasn't having someone hear you the crown of all ghostly achievements?

I sat there, confused and red-faced, for two minutes whilst she dug through her purse and threw suspicious glances around the lobby. I had to say something soon, or else I'd be sucked back into Matthew and Michelle's void of slobbery love and be filled with jealousy once their movie ended- which meant permanent invisibility.

"Hi. What's up? I'm Alfred but my friends call me Freddie or anything they can think of," I garbled.

She glanced around her, hair sliding off her shoulders in perfect wavelets. "I have pepper spray and a black belt," she hissed threateningly at the salt shaker, her delicate hands laid flat on the table. I couldn't help but laugh. Any sort of malice was useless, and it was especially funny since she looked nuts. "I'll kill you, I swear it."

I opened my mouth to laugh harder, but the tiniest of catches in her voice made me freeze in shame. I'd scared her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to freak you out - it ain't your fault you can't see me."

The hardness in her face melted just slightly into fear; not relief like I'd hoped. Oh no. _Please don't scream, _I begged silently. She didn't deserve the nut label.

"Come," she whispered, dashing into the game room.

At first I questioned her choice, but applauded it when she couldn't find anyone upon her close inspection.

"I don't know who you are, but I want you to leave me alone. If you're here, it means that I have the same prowess with spirits as my brother, and I can't allow myself to get wrapped up in that." She shook her head. "Are you here, ghost?"

"Of course I'm here. I ain't that rude. And you know who I am. I just told you. I'd prefer you'd call me by name." _No one's done that in such a long time._

She flinched, and then steeled herself by gripping the game behind her. Her nails were French, I noted. So delicate. So classy.

"Good. I would have you banished to hell, but then my brother would know I could do the same as he, and he'd never let me free. A-Alfred, can you make yourself visible? I don't like talking to no one."

"Don't you think if I knew how, I would've by now? A pretty thing like you doesn't need to have whispers following her," I said quietly, biting my cheek.

She sighed. "Well this complicates things. What am I saying? Just leave, Alfred. You're dead, and I sure don't need you hanging around." She spun and left with her long wool jacket and pin-straight hair twisting a second after she turned the corner.

The words stung worse than anything I'd experienced as a ghost, and as I followed her, I'd tried not to show my wounded pride and disappointment in my voice. It didn't work. "Please don't leave me here," I half-whimpered, suddenly painfully aware of the hopelessness of my situation. She was the bright light in my tunnel vision, and I now that I had found her, I clung to her like glue.

Only, she was probably the darkest light I'd ever seen.


End file.
